Eating their words, along with some wedding cake

Congratulations to Vermont, and to newspaper editorial pages honest enough to admit they were once histrionic about same-sex marriage

Editorial pages, to be intellectually honest, are supposed to 'fess up when they change their minds. It doesn't always happen, I suspect, more because the editorial writers change, or they forget to go back and check their previous position, or they simply get in a hurry.

But in Vermont, recently, a few newspapers have been looking back at their previous positions on same-sex marriage, and realizing that some of what they spouted in the past was ridiculous.

In a 1999 editorial, for instance, the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press "spoke of the need to bridge the cultural divide to reach a consensus if we were to embark on such a major change to a fundamental social institution." That makes perfect sense. However, the editorial didn't stop there.

"We went so far as to warn that becoming the only state to allow same-sex marriage would make Vermont a target hostile to the idea, solemnly predicting, 'There will be violence.' That prediction of course was pure nonsense ... The world as we knew it hardly changed at all."

This year, the newspaper endorsed same-sex marriage. And this week, Vermont became the first state to legislatively enact it. It's a historic moment, and a kind of neat book end, too, since Vermont was the first state to enact an approximation of marriage for gays and lesbians, called civil unions, in 2000.

A civil union (in Oregon, we call it a domestic partnership) gives homosexual couples the same benefits and responsibilities that heterosexual couples have, at least under state law. But it doesn't give the relationship the name "marriage," and that makes a fairly substantial difference. It perpetuates a kind of second-class stature. (Or at least I think it tends to. Not all gay and lesbian couples agree; I've interviewed some in Oregon who were thrilled to get the economic protections of marriage, and not as worried about what people want to call it.)

In any case, Vermont has decided that the name matters, and it's very clear that the state's experience with civil unions paved the way for the legislative action.

As a task force in Vermont put it last year, "The sky didn't fall."

But a few newspapers, and some other opponents no doubt, too, had to eat their words.